Days Without Number (34 page)

'Besides, he remembered something from his childhood. His grandparents had been looking after him at Trennor while his parents had a weekend away. This would have been when he was nine or ten. Nineteen eighty-six or eighty-seven. Around that time. He'd been woken up one night by the sound of them arguing. He'd gone downstairs and listened to them shouting at each other, apparently, down in the cellar. He recalled feeling frightened by the intensity of the dispute between two people he'd thought of until then as soft old 286

Granny and Grandpa. He crept back to bed and never breathed a word about hearing them. But he never forgot. And one phrase of his grandmother's stuck in his mind. "I want that thing removed." Repeated several times. "I want that thing removed."

'It seemed to me - and to him - that the time had come to find out what she'd been referring to. I knew what Jonty would have thought. I was beginning to think it myself. My father's body was what she wanted removed. So, we devised a test. If Michael Paleologus really had murdered my father and buried him under the floor at Trennor, he wouldn't agree to sell the house at any price. He'd have to cling on to it, even if his children were pleading with him to sell, even if he could present no decent argument not to sell. And we wanted him to know, of course. We wanted him to realize what it was all about.

'I borrowed the name Elspeth Hartley from an art historian at Bristol I'd worked with occasionally who I knew to be on sabbatical herself. Harriet Elsmore was a straightforward alias. Tantris was more complicated. Tom devised it as a tease and an additional test. He also came up with the capital we needed to give the Tantris deal wings. By then he was enjoying himself, which worried me. He was beginning to take pleasure in tormenting his grandfather - and, by extension, the rest of you. That wasn't what it was supposed to be about. Not for me. I just wanted the truth. I still do.'

'You and me both.'

'Yeah. OK. Point taken. It gets rough from here on in. I want you to know that I wouldn't have allowed it to continue if I'd foreseen the consequences of our little plot. I even tried to call a halt after your father's death. But Tom wouldn't let me. He was determined to go on to the end. "We can't stop now," he said. "We can't stop until it's all out in the open." I suspect he was at Trennor the night your father died, though he denied it. You all thought he was in Edinburgh, of course. But he was much closer. He left that condolences card on your brother Andrew's Land Rover. He followed the pair of 287

you to Minions, guessed what you were up to and was ready and waiting when you dumped the body there the following night. He got on the train from Edinburgh at Plymouth the next day and got off at Bodrnin Parkway, where Andrew was waiting to pick him up, believing he'd been on it all the way. He led you on with that story of being sent a copy of The Romance of Tristan by his grandfather. During the funeral party, he planted the video in your car. Then he sat back to see which way you'd jump.

'And that's when he started to lose control. Andrew's death was an accident, but Tom was substantially responsible for it. Only then did he realize, I think, that it wasn't a game. Or, if it was, that it was a game with rules he didn't understand. There were other players, too, more powerful than either of us. They made sure there was nothing for the police to find in the shaft. And then they came after us. Farnsworth's one of them. But there are others. There must be. Who removed the body from the shaft? Who photographed Tom and me at Robusta? Who - and why? That's what I've been trying to figure out. I urged Tom to leave Edinburgh. He was too much of a target there. But he wouldn't. It was as if he wanted to be punished for what he'd done. He changed so much after Andrew's death. So much and so fast. In the end, I suppose he saw suicide as the only choice left to him.'

'And where were you, while his choices were being whittled away?'

'I was hiding. And thinking.'

'I've done a lot of thinking myself.'

Ts that why you're going to Venice?'

T'm going to Venice because that's where Basil's gone and I fear for his safety.'

'Can't you just tell him to come home?'

'He's out of touch.'

'You mean he's missing?'

'Maybe.'

'Then I suppose you must go. You should be careful, though. Very careful.'

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'Do you think I might end up at the bottom of a canal?'

'Yes. I'm afraid I do.'

'You'd better hope not. If I can't settle this, they'll still be on your trail, whoever they are.'

'I'd hope not in any case. I believe your father was complicit in my father's murder and by association in my brother's murder. But I don't hold you responsible. You should have gone to the police when you found the body, but you've had to face the consequences of that mistake. I'd like my father to be given a proper burial, but that's not going to happen. I dearly wish I'd done something to save Tom from himself, but it's too late. There's nothing I can do now. Except save myself - and hopefully a few others.'

'How do you propose to do that?'

'I'm going back to Milwaukee. I hope they'll leave me alone there. I hope they'll understand I'm giving up and let it go at that. I have to think of others as well as myself. I can't risk them targeting Jonty's children. I've told you the truth, Nick. I hope it helps. It's the only help I can offer.'

'It's not enough.'

'I never said it would be.'

'What can you tell me about Demetrius Paleologus?'

'Nothing. I read the report on him from the private detective Jonty hired in Cyprus, but there was nothing in it beyond what you already know. An elderly absentee hotelier, resident in Venice. In possession of a valuable secret, I assume. But what that secret is . . .' She sighed. 'There is one connection, tenuous in the extreme and impossible to interpret. It ties the Paleologuses in with St Neot and Tintagel. It links their histories. But it may be pure happenstance. You shouldn't--'

'What is it?'

'OK. I'll tell you. One of the books in Jonty's collection was a biography of Richard, Earl of Cornwall, the man responsible for the construction of Tintagel Castle. The Left Hand of the King, it's called. Years out of print. God knows where Jonty got hold of a copy. You may have heard of the author. Vernon Drysdale.'

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'A friend of Farnsworth's. I met him in Edinburgh.'

'Mention his book, did he?'

'Not that one.'

'Jonty had another by him. Shades of Grail. Bit of a potboiler. Not worth wasting your time on.'

'Too late.' Nick remembered the telephone call he had taken from Drysdale just before leaving Edinburgh. The professor had been trying to draw his attention to something else he had written. But Nick had not been listening. He was now. 'Fill me in on the other one.'

'All right. The title - The Left Hand of the King - refers to Richard's close lifelong relationship with his elder brother, King Henry the Third. They were born just fifteen months apart and died within a few months of each other as well. Most historians dwell on their supposed rivalry, but Drysdale sees it differently. He thinks they were the loyalest of allies, who often found it convenient to pretend not to be. Their father, King John, died in twelve sixteen, when they were children. His widow married into the Lusignan family, rulers of Jerusalem before its reconquest by the Saracens. So, through his mother, Richard had Crusader associations from his earliest days. He was created Earl of Cornwall when he was sixteen and bought the manor of Bossiney some years later specifically in order to build a castle at Tintagel.

'It was a crazy project in its way, hugely complicated in engineering terms and therefore vastly expensive, with no conceivable strategic value. The castle was also deliberately old-fashioned. It had no military function. It was a wealthy young man's whim, we're told, a stage-set for some Arthurian play-acting. Drysdale has his doubts. He thinks King Henry put his brother up to it, or at least wholeheartedly approved. Why, Drysdale doesn't know, but he suspects a hidden agenda. By twelve forty, the castle was complete.

'In June of that year, Richard embarked for the Holy Land, exact intentions unclear. He arrived in October and stayed till May of twelve forty-one, during which period he .seemed in some strange way to be accepted as overlord of the Crusader 290

states, representing them in discussions with a delegate from the Byzantine Emperor John Vatatzes. That delegate was Andronicus Paleologus. He was accompanied by his son Michael - the future Emperor Michael the Eighth, founder of the Paleologan Imperial line. And one of the knights in Richard's retinue was Ralph Valletort, who owned the manor of Lewarne, in the parish of St Neot. Drysdale makes nothing of that, of course. He merely mentions the name in passing. But Valletort's important. His coat of arms appears in one of the St Neot windows, yet his family died out in the fourteenth century, more than a hundred years before the glazing scheme got under way.'

'What's all that supposed to prove?'

'It doesn't prove anything. But it means something. I'm sure of it. And there's one more thing you should know about Richard of Cornwall: his choice of wife. When he was twenty one, he married a daughter of William the Marshal, Earl of Pembroke. Pembroke served as Regent during Henry the Third's minority. He was the strong man of the kingdom. He was also a Knight Templar. You can see his tomb in the Temple Church in London. Like I said, it could all be happenstance. But I don't think so. I doubt you truly think so either. The Crusades, the Templars, Tintagel, St Neot, Trennor and your family. They're connected. And my father and my brother died because of that connection.'

'So did mine, in case you'd forgotten.'

'I hadn't. But what do we gain by swapping reproaches, Nick? What's done is done. We can't repair the past. Only the future matters. Our futures. And those of our loved ones. That's why I'm giving up. It's why you should give up too.'

'Maybe I will. Once I know Basil's safe.'

'When did you last hear from him?'

'Yesterday morning.'

'And when did you last expect to hear from him?'

'Long before now.'

Elspeth Hartley - or Emily Braybourne, as Nick was trying to force himself to think of her - fell silent at that. The car

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bore them on through the amber-leeched night for several wordless minutes.

Then Nick said, 'What are you thinking?'

'I'm thinking you'll go after him whatever I say.'

'But you reckon it's too late, don't you?'

'I reckon it's not too late for you, Nick. I reckon you still have a chance.'

'I'm going anyway.'

'I know.'

'So, perhaps you should take me home.'

Nothing more was said as they completed their circuit of the ring road and headed back to Damson Close. Nick was physically tired and mentally overwhelmed. Every time he tried to piece it together - the stained glass of centuries past, the excavation at Tintagel seventy years ago, the secret supposedly shared by three men ten years later in Cyprus - it fell apart in his mind. He did not even have the comfort now of blaming it all on the elusive Elspeth Hartley. She was elusive - and Elspeth - no longer. She was Emily Braybourne, with her own claim to victimhood.

There had been little traffic on the ring road and there was none at all in the residential byways of Walnut Tree. Just as they approached Damson Close, however, a dark-coloured Transit van, driving without lights, surged out from the cul-de- sac and swept past them. Emily braked violently and blasted her horn, but the van sped on and away, its lights finally flicking on as it rounded the next bend and vanished from sight.

'Christ,' said Emily. 'What a way to . . .' Then she looked at Nick. 'I don't suppose they do drive like that round here, do they?'

'No.'

'I was going to drop you here. But perhaps I'd better take you to your door after all.'

She turned into Damson Close and drove slowly along to

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his house. Nothing looked amiss. The lights that were on were the ones he had left on. She stopped and he got out. 'Wait here,' he called, starting up the drive. He saw her nod to him through the windscreen, her face sallow in the lamplight.

As he reached the front door, he noticed it was ajar. The lock had been damaged in some way. The snib no longer engaged. He stepped inside and, glancing through to the kitchen, saw the contents of his bag strewn across the floor. He instinctively patted his pocket, reminding himself that he had his passport on him. His chequebook had been left lying amongst his scattered clothing - a strange oversight for a burglar. But his visitor had not been a burglar, of course.

Nick looked into the dining room. The drawers of the desk and cabinet had been pulled open. And his computer disks were missing.

He hurried back out and down the drive. Emily was talking on her mobile, he was surprised to see. She rang off as he approached and lowered her window. 'What gives?'

'Somebody's broken in and had a look around.'

'Funny, isn't it? All this time you've been away, nothing happens. Now, straight after your return, you get turned over.'

'What do you make of that?'

'I imagine they were only interested in what you might have brought with you.'

Then they'll have been disappointed.'

'You shouldn't stay here after this.'

'It's only until morning. I've nowhere else to go, anyway.'

'I could take you somewhere.'

'I thought you were getting out while the going was good.'

'I still am.'

'Who were you just speaking to?'

'Don't you trust me, Nick?'

'More than I did.'

'But not completely. I get the message. Since you ask, I was on the phone to a hotel at Heathrow I'm booked into.

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There's safety in anonymity. I was checking they had plenty of vacancies.'

'And they do?'

'One more would be no problem.'

Nick considered his options. The breakin was something he could not ignore. They were onto him, whoever they were. And he was easy to find in his suburban isolation.